The field of the disclosure relates generally to a remote processing device for use with inspection apparatuses and, more particularly, to a remote processing device and method for inspecting industrial assets with inspection apparatuses.
Inspection apparatuses include ground, air, and water-based vehicles that may be autonomous, semi-autonomous, or piloted. Such inspection apparatuses often include onboard navigation systems, such as inertial navigation systems, and satellite navigation systems. Certain known inspection apparatuses further include one or more sensors for capturing data corresponding to the environment in which the inspection apparatuses are operating. For example, some known inspection apparatuses inspect industrial assets, such as oil and gas processing equipment, by capturing sensor data relevant to the operational status of the equipment. At least some known inspection apparatuses perform on-board processing of collected data before transmission to another computing device. Such on-board processing negatively affects available mission time for the inspection apparatus by consuming power to perform the processing and by adding weight to the inspection apparatus for specialized processing hardware. Accordingly, operators are often forced to choose between incomplete data regarding the industrial asset being inspected or the time consuming, expensive, and inefficient course of performing multiple inspection passes of the industrial equipment.